February 10, 2026
Introduction: In this conclusion of a four-part series, James Pylant tells his own genealogical journey, that started when he was 11, about his vast Meador family and their many connections and stories – including the Medders, who lived the life of the super-rich before it all came crashing down. James is an editor at GenealogyMagazine.com and author for JacobusBooks.com, is an award-winning historical true-crime writer, and authorized celebrity biographer.
Recap: In researching his Meador family connections, the author has uncovered many stories about his Meador(s)-Meadow(s)-Medders relatives who hoped that kinship would bring them wealth. (Note: spelling of the family surname varies, with Meador, Meadors, Meadow, Meadows, and Medders all being used.) The tale starts with Spindletop, the famed oil strike outside of Beaumont, Texas, on 10 January 1901 with a well called Lucas No. 1 erupting into a massive gusher producing about 100,000 barrels of oil a day. Anthony Lucas, who struck the gusher, had deeded a one-eighth undivided mineral interest to Ephraim Garonzik, who transferred it to James Meadors in 1911.
One of the most outrageous stories concerns Ernest Medders and his wife Margaret, who got to experience the life of the super-rich before it all came crashing down (see Part 3).
Things went from bad to worse for Margaret after her husband Ernest died from a heart attack in 1975. On 13 September 1976, she and noted film producer Sol Baer Fielding were arrested at Los Angeles International Airport for attempting to charge two airline tickets using the American Express card of Carroll Sinclair, a Dallas-based gold and precious metals dealer.
Previously, Margaret Medders had announced that Fielding was in the “final stages” of writing the screenplay for her book, The Sweet Repeat. Then, she said, he would tackle her first book, The Medders Story: How to Survive Adulation, Honor, Gossip, Condemnation, Riches, and Poverty. In this newspaper article, Sinclair explains that he, along with many creditors, had been duped by the prospect of these supposed movies that Medders and Fielding were making:
The two, Sinclair said, had “dangled it (the movie) like a carrot on the end of a stick to their creditors. It was their only hope of recovering any money, if the movie ever made it.”
Upset by the arrest, Margaret was hospitalized on October 15 in West Hollywood – “too ill to appear for a court hearing on forgery charges.”
The charges against the two were dismissed on December 15, but Margaret’s troubles were far from over. By then, she had picked up another legal problem.
In Texas, a Dallas grand jury indicted her on November 29 for felony theft of more than $10,000 for the unpaid three-month hotel stay in that city. Yet she was nowhere to be found.
This article reports:
A grand jury yesterday returned an indictment for theft against Mrs. Margaret Medders, East Tennessee native who used a fictitious fortune to buy her way into the company of Texas’ richest and most influential citizens, including President Lyndon Johnson.
Mrs. Medders, 57, was charged with theft of more than $10,000 in connection with a bill she allegedly ran up during a three-month stay at a Dallas hotel. Exact total of the bill was not disclosed.
…A Denver motel also claimed Mrs. Medders ran up $2500 in bills during a six-week stay in August and September, and an 80-year-old Memphis osteopath said Mrs. Medders helped spend her life savings of $150,000 on promises of large financial rewards.
Dr. Mary Davis, an osteopath in Memphis, Tennessee, wanted to see Mrs. Medders indicted there, too. In a Washington Post interview reprinted in the Denver Post, Dr. Davis said her life savings were spent by Margaret as the two traveled together for six months.
“By the time I got home I had about $15 left to my name,” Dr. Davis said. The return to Memphis came with more bad news. “I couldn’t even get a telephone because Mrs. Medders had charged $4,000 in long-distance calls from my home,” she said.
Carroll Sinclair told the newspaper that he first encountered Margaret two days before Christmas in 1975 when she responded to his newspaper advertisement in which he offered to buy silver. “First time Mrs. Medders telephoned me I knew exactly who she was, but she still got me,” he said. She brought $500 worth of silver flatware, which he purchased, but then she began asking for small loans to pay off debts. Sinclair loaned her $12,000.
This newspaper article also reports:
Hotels from Minnesota to Texas also are wondering where Margaret Medders is. Three of them claim to be out a total of at least $15,000.
Ten years ago some people actually thought it was funny when Margaret Medders fooled Neiman-Marcus, three banks and hundreds of unsuspecting Texas socialites.
After all, where else but in Texas could an out-of-work mechanic’s helper, Ernest Medders, and his wife, Margaret, pull it off?
They borrowed $3 million, with no collateral, built a fabulous estate in Muenster, Tex., and stepped right into the Texas whirl of society. Their fantasy lasted five years, ending in 1967, when creditors figured out that all of the Medders’ money was borrowed and that the couple had no serious income.
The creditors, led by Neiman-Marcus, immediately drove the Medders into bankruptcy.
…The Medders’ opulent ’60s lifestyle turned out to be a fantasy that Texans will be talking about for years to come. If ever anyone needed to prove that by flashing enough wealth, one can make it in high society, Margaret and Ernest Medders proved it beyond a doubt.
Several weeks later, the Dallas police specialized crime division received a tip about Margaret’s stay in a $1,500-a month room at L’Ermitage Hotel in Beverly Hills, California. She was arrested on January 27 but transferred within a half-hour to the prison ward of the Los Angeles County General Hospital after complaining of chest pain.
Waiving extradition, Margaret returned to Texas on February 2 and went to the Dallas County jail hospital for the treatment of diabetes and a heart ailment. Meanwhile, her son Gene Riggs petitioned Dallas County’s probate court to declare her mentally incompetent and requested guardianship of his mother.
Margaret received a five-year prison sentence.
Then she was sent to Memphis, where, on 31 October 1978, the 60-year-old pleaded guilty to five counts of obtaining money under false pretenses with a three-year sentence on each. An agreement called for the sentences to be served concurrently. Attorneys factored time off for good behavior and predicted her incarceration would last about 18 months. Her plea for probation was denied.
However, in May 1979, Judge James C. Beasley – noting Margaret’s stroke in January – decided she could be supervised by Arkansas probation officials and placed on probation for four years. Conditionally, he ordered her to pay $1,751 court costs and repay the Tennesseans she defrauded.
Still, the Court of Criminal Appeals in Austin, Texas, upheld the theft conviction and five-year sentence given to her for bilking the Dallas hotel. While at the county jail in Dallas, Margaret underwent psychiatric treatment for manic-depressive psychosis.
This article reports:
It [the fantasy that you’re about to be incredibly wealthy] is a belief that Mrs. Medders said she clung to until a psychiatrist at the county jail in Dallas began treating her for manic-depressive psychosis, a mental illness marked by alternating periods of great elation and deep depression. During the manic stage, when feelings are running to euphoria, victims often think they are super business dealers. Mrs. Medders is now sure that this was the cause of much of her trouble.
“I think I’ve had mental problems all my life. I tried to kill myself when I was 17 because of a breakup with a young man. That was in Jellico, Tenn., where I grew up. Later, I’d get real high and do these things and then I’d get real low because of the things I did. I had a very bad habit of writing checks and not having the money in the bank. But I always believed it would be there. I look back, now, and wonder how I thought I was going to get it. I wonder about other things, too, like why I had to stay in such expensive hotels. It was ridiculous. It was the manic thing: it feels so good when you’re up there. The reason I never faced the fact that the oil money wasn’t there is because it would have been too painful. So I just convinced myself that it would be there, sometime.”
Margaret would make headlines again when the 63-year-old married a 49-year-old Methodist minister, James Nathan Orr. While incarcerated at Goree State Farm for Women in Huntsville, Texas, she began corresponding with Orr, who was serving time at Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola. The penal pen pals exchanged vows in a prison chapel in 1981, though they weren’t free to honeymoon until her September 1982 parole.
Settling into married life, the Orrs dodged the spotlight. During their 21-year marriage, they made their home in Kentucky. The Reverend Orr died in 2002, two years after his retirement. His widow, Margaret Smiddy Riggs Medders Orr, survived him by nearly a decade, dying at 93 on 12 January 2012. Both were buried in the same burial ground as Ernest Medders – Sacred Heart Cemetery in Muenster, Texas, the scene of the Medders’ wild spending.
In that 1978 Commercial Appeal interview, Margaret said:
“You’ll never know what it feels like to be really rich until you believe, like I did, that you have $500 million. When you believe that, you can do anything – or at least you think you can.”
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Note on the header image: “Heywood #2 Gusher,” Spindletop, Beaumont, Texas, 1901. Credit: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
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